The West has been flooded with barbarians, who are no longer at the gates but well inside them.

But the threat of the barbarians from without is minuscule compared to the reality that barbarism itself has become perfectly normal within our society, and barbaric practices have been adopted by many Americans.

The chances that a graduate from a prestigious college in America will embrace barbarism are likely higher than your average illegal alien, at least from a few years ago. Most illegal aliens come here to live the American Dream, and prior to Biden’s open door/let’s hand you a check policy they likely got jobs and kept their heads down.

This video really drives home the point that our education system is broken. The worst part is how confident they are. These two genuinely think they’re geniuses as they defend Hamas. How do you fix this?pic.twitter.com/kDb4W2fNEz

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) November 8, 2023

College students? Not so much. BLM and Antifa barbarians? They are barbaric nihilists bent on destroying everything that is good about our society.

Over the past few years, we have seen an explosion of violence and property crime in our cities, and the political activism that is normal on college campuses has turned into mob action aimed at intimidating and silencing anybody the activists don’t like.

Here, you can see “activists” taunting and threatening Jewish students with violence after a solidarity demonstration for the kidnapped in Gaza. One girl said, “We’ll see you after class, be ready.” pic.twitter.com/XlG9U6YHFX

— איתן (@YehudiGadol) November 8, 2023

It’s not just that conservative speakers aren’t welcome at colleges. That is intellectually damaging, of course, but that is not what I am referring to. It is the rage, the violence, the thrill of the mob, and the glee in attacking people.

.@Riley_Gaines_ tells me the police at San Francisco State University "did a very POOR job" of protecting her: "I think they were scared. They didn't want to be labeled as anything other than an ally to the [trans] community." pic.twitter.com/KTKosAy3tS

— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) April 13, 2023

It goes far beyond politics and college campuses. At the pro-Palestinian protests you see people explicitly endorsing hatred and violence against Jews. Not just sly references to eliminating Israel, but open antisemitism and embrace of Hitlerian tactics.

You see people with swastikas at rallies, screams of “f**k the Jews,” and justification of Hamas’ terror as “resistance” to settler colonialism, as if Jews don’t belong in a homeland that has been theirs for literally thousands of years, and was formally recognized by the United Nations in 1948.

The radical ideologies floating out there could be described as a swing of the pendulum, but the embrace of violence and destruction coupled with the open hatred for our society is a threat to the very existence of our culture. As it is intended to be.

What makes this outbreak of barbarianism fundamentally different from the 1960s, where we saw a similar descent into madness that wasn’t fully rejected until well into the Reagan years, is the fact that our major institutions are now owned by the barbarians themselves.

.@Riley_Gaines_ tells me the police at San Francisco State University "did a very POOR job" of protecting her: "I think they were scared. They didn't want to be labeled as anything other than an ally to the [trans] community." pic.twitter.com/KTKosAy3tS

— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) April 13, 2023

Western resilience in the 1980s was buttressed by the fact that our education system, Hollywood, and the media were not fundamentally corrupted in the way they are today. Each of these institutions leaned left, but not Left. They were dominated by people who thought America could be better, not that it must be destroyed.

That is no longer the case. Your average college professor is either a radical or is so intimidated by them that they remain quiet. Your average college student has already been exposed to over a decade of propaganda and is then thrown into a hothouse of political nihilism that it is a miracle if they come out sane.

Hey @ucdavis, do you think it’s appropriate that one of your faculty advisors, @jemmaisOKeh, is publicly threatening to murder Jews at their homes and their children at their schools? pic.twitter.com/xAx97LHYbr

— Jason Bedrick 🇮🇱 (@JasonBedrick) October 19, 2023

When Riley Gaines was attacked in San Francisco, the university’s administrators expressed pride in their students, not horror at the fact that an invited speaker was assaulted. The students at the school were proud of what they did, and their university was too.

Full video: https://t.co/50z2QOURju

— Adam Guillette (@adamguillette) April 27, 2023

After Audrey Hale shot up a school and killed a bunch of children, protesters went to the capitol and called her one of the victims because she was driven to murder by hateful people. They embraced Hale.

Hale killed 6 people. The protesters held up 7 fingers, as if her being shot by the police was victimizing her.

"Seven Fingers, Seven Victims" — TN Capitol Protesters Appear to Include Trans Shooter Among the Victims pic.twitter.com/vCd1tAYwWb

— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) March 31, 2023

Watching videos of barbarians ripping down posters of kidnapped children in Gaza is heartbreaking, not because I can’t understand people being appalled by the scale of death this war is causing in Gaza, but because these people clearly think the Jews deserve everything done to them.

This was a terrorist attack that killed 31 Americans. Other Americans are still being held hostage by the terrorist group. And here you have someone openly celebrating it on American streets.

These words should haunt her for the rest of her life. https://t.co/W2nfL395eR

— AG (@AGHamilton29) November 5, 2023

Obviously, this embrace of barbarism goes far beyond the Israel-Hamas conflict; it’s just that the open embrace of hate is so obvious in this one case.

But those videos of mass invasions of stores to loot them, the “wilding” that has terrified city dwellers, and the streets filled with zombie drug addicts all add up to a society that no longer is willing to defend itself.

The barbarians who have invaded–and let’s be honest, as bad as the illegal immigration crisis is and as important it is to control our borders and punish illegal entry in the country, most are not here to wreak destruction–are less of an existential danger to the country than the home-grown barbarians our educational system and academic institutions have created. Add in the people who have embraced the identity of “victim” in urban America and you have a toxic brew.

I’d certainly trade any number of these protesters at colleges or Antifa supporters 1 for 1 in return for an illegal migrant who wants to actually do real work.

When we have public defenders embracing the barbarism–people on the public payroll–the sepsis has already seeped into the bones.

Did you think these far Left miscreants would change their worldview once they left university? They’re judges, lawmakers, DAs. Reap. Sow. https://t.co/kMWeaNCVFx

— Rita Panahi (@RitaPanahi) November 5, 2023

It’s not just in America. It is an illness that has struck the entire West. Wherever you turn–France, Britain, Australia, New Zealand–you see a rottenness in the culture. It’s not that everything is rotten–far from it. But once the rot has spread far enough it eats away at the healthy tissue.

Islamic France: Cooking Jewish Babies…

“Warda Anwar” (a.k.a. Haneia Nakei) Jokes about a Jewish Baby Being Cooked in an Oven by Hamas…

Anwar "humorously speculates about the “accompaniments” for the baby’s leg and declares, “Each time I come across the story of the baby… pic.twitter.com/e7M1ZH5rMI

— Amy Mek (@AmyMek) November 5, 2023

So far our elite institutions have embraced the decline, perhaps thinking that they will benefit or at least survive the destruction of the West. That is insane, but also self-evidently true that they believe it. They cater to, fund, hire, and promote the most rotten parts of our society.

These veterans must be wondering when their country fell. Police warn them not to hang British flags on the barriers but the cops do nothing as British monuments are draped in Palestinian flags & vandalised. pic.twitter.com/2PJfqSrZdC

— Rita Panahi (@RitaPanahi) November 5, 2023

The key to all this is the decline of our education system, which should be part of the cultural immune system. Instead, it has become the spreader of the disease that is destroying the West.

Meet Sophie Pommier, an expert consultant for the 🇫🇷 French Foreign Ministry. Here she is in Paris ripping off posters of Israeli children kidnapped by Hamas. Why, @SophiePom @francediplo_EN? https://t.co/UD8xvrdLEz

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) November 7, 2023

Florida, at least, is fighting back, and other states may follow. School choice and cleaning out academia are two of the key moves we can make, and we simply must rebuild our criminal justice system.

Can we do it? I don’t know.

But we have to try.